FROM YOUR EDITORS

As
stated in the club’s June newsletter, our club’s official July meeting will be
held at our Summer picnic scheduled for Saturday, July 22nd starting
at 11:30 am. Location will be the same as last year….the Centennial Park
Campground in the Muldoon/ Glenn Highway area. A map is provided with this
newsletter on the location.

The club
will provide the chips, dips, ice, soda pop, hamburgers, hotdogs, napkins, and
plastic utensils (knives, forks, spoons). Bill Hamilton will provide the
barbecue grill. We ask that our members bring small potluck dishes such as
salads, desserts, and hors d’oeuvres to the event.

Roy Brown
will be contacting each of you to verify attendance and see what potluck dishes
will be brought. This will help us determine the quantities of food and items
needed for the event.

There should
be lots of good food with the highlight of the event being our YN Numismatic
Auction. Looks like about 15 lots so far have been collected for the event. One
of the lots is a nice U.S. 1908 $2 & ½ Gold Indian in XF40 condition. Your Board
will be collecting more lots for the auction in the next few weeks. We are
trying to get about 40 or so nice auction lots by the time of the July 22nd
Summer picnic.

Winning
ticket for our latest raffle coin will be drawn at the event. The raffle coin is
a set of two U.S. Walker Half Dollars:

1940-P PCGS MS64 Certified coin.

1936-D HTGS MS63 Certified coin.

At our June
3rd meeting, Loren gave a presentation on “The Changes in the
Jefferson Nickel”. Loren has followed up with an article on this subject in
this month’s newsletter.

Lets all
have a good time on the afternoon of July 22nd.

See you
there………Your Editors.

MEMBERSHIP NEWS

Schedule
of Events for the Month of July

Anchorage Coin Club’s Summer Picnic: July 22nd (Saturday)
starting at 11:30 am and going through the afternoon. Picnic will be at the
Centennial Park Campground (see map). The main eventwill be our
club’s YN Numismatic Auction. Members, YNs, and general public welcomed.

Anchorage Coin Club Board Meeting: July 19th (Wednesday) at
7:00 PM at the “New Cauldron Restaurant” located at the University
Center. Club members welcomed.

Minutes
of the June 21st Board Meeting

The meeting
was called to order at 7:20 pm.

Meeting was
held at the New Cauldron Restaurant located at the University Center in
Anchorage.

The entire
meeting focused on preparations for the July 22nd Summer picnic. Stan
Mead will be picking up the items needed for the picnic. For now, Stan will look
at providing items for about 50 people. Depending upon Roy’s calls to the
members, Stan will adjust the quantities accordingly.

Bill
Hamilton will arrange for the barbecue grill to be delivered around 11 am that
Saturday. That should provide enough time to have hot food ready by 12 noon.

Larry Nakata
will get with the Centennial Park Campground supervisor to make arrangements for
3-4 tables at the picnic grounds. We will have use of the campground’s house
which has toilet and kitchen facilities.

Larry
brought up a concern that the number of numismatic donation lots still remains
small for the YN Auction. We are only up to about 15 lots for the auction. The
Board members agreed to actively solicit more donation items with the intent of
getting about 40 lots by the time of the Summer picnic.

As there was
no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 8:00 pm.

ANNOUNCEMENT: ANCHORAGE COIN CLUB’S 18TH ANNUAL SUMMER PICNIC

Date:
July 22nd Saturday

Time:
11:30 am through the afternoon

Location:
Centennial Park Campground

Come have a great time at our club’s
summer picnic. Lots of fun and food. We will conduct the YN Numismatic Auction
as the key event of this picnic.

The winning
ticket for our club’s latest raffle coin will be picked at this event.

See you there……

A WORD ABOUT NICKELS
by Loren Lucason (Member #97)

The first 5 cent U.S. nickel was the Shield
nickel introduced in 1866. Many people thought the design was ugly. It did not
last long.
Nickel is a hard metal to refine. It is also a
hard metal to strike. Copper is added to soften it. The country had taken to
hoarding silver during the civil war so when nickel became available it was
used in coinage. Nickel has since become the most popular coin metal in the
world.
The Liberty nickel went into circulation in
1883 and became one of our most used coins. Despite the hardness of the metal
most Liberty nickels found today are quite worn. The infamous first variety of
the design lacked the word “cents”. It was coated with a little gold by
racketeers and passed off as a 5 dollar coin. The last Liberty nickel released
was dated 1912 but a couple dated 1913 made it out of the mint. They became
the rarest and most sought after coins in America. And they’re just nickels.
In 1913 the Buffalo nickel was issued. With an
Indian chief on the front and a buffalo on the back it is considered the most
American coin the mint has ever put out. They wanted the date to be indented
but people thought germs wound get caught up in there. Thus the date sticking
out of the coin is generally the first thing to wear off.
The Jefferson nickel was part of the
transition to dead presidents on our coins. It is easy to put a set together.
An interesting and historic part of the set is the silver nickels issued
during the second world war. Nickel was needed for the war effort. They are
not rare but a BU set of war nickels is hard to put together. The hardest
Jefferson to find in BU though is the ‘39D. The mark of a choice Jefferson
nickel is the number of steps you can count on Monticello on the back.
If you are a numismatist you know about the
new nickels. They commemorate the Louisiana purchase as well as Louis &
Clark’s expedition across the continent. The “Westward Journey” nickels not
only had new designs on the back they also had new renditions of Jefferson on
the front. Jefferson went from a profile to a 3/4 profile facing the other
way. And now Monticello is back and Jefferson is facing out of the coin. Check
it out…..Loren.

THE
GREAT ALASKA COPPER RUSH - Part Iby Mike Nourse (Life Member #1)

McCarthy, Alaska

Yes, I did
say copper. And I didn't mean to say gold. We really did have a copper rush up
here, and it was really getting going one century ago just about 150 air miles
East of Anchorage in what is coincidentally known as the Copper River Valley.

It may seem
hard to believe that such a fuss was made over lowly copper since we as coin
collectors are so used to looking at copper as a base metal with no particular
value to the metal itself. The reason for that disregard for this metal is
because we are used to dealing with it in such small quantities that the metal
value really is inconsequential. Even the huge cartwheels coins of Great Britain
and Russia in the late 1700's to early 1800's had at most a few ounces, while
copper prices are quoted in pounds or more often in tons. Quick, how much is an
ounce of copper worth? Even if you are good at math, you still have to think
about it for a second or two to divide the current price of over $3 per pound by
16 to get the price per ounce, or convert to troy pounds then divide by 12 to
get the value per troy ounce so that you can compare it against silver and gold.
Are you done yet?

Now you may
think copper does not matter since you only collect silver and gold coins.
Unless you are only collecting bullion silver and gold coins such as the
American Eagle series, then the coins you have almost certainly have some copper
in them. This is the case because pure silver and gold are too soft to be used
in coinage without an alloy of some other metal. In the United States, the alloy
metal of choice was copper. Even our nickel five cent piece is seventy five
percent copper though it is hard to believe by looking at it. So, like it or
not, you almost certainly have some copper in your collection. Darn those copper
spots on my $20 gold piece!

Back to the
great Alaska copper rush. Copper really is a base metal compared to silver and
gold. Since it's price is often quoted in terms of dollars per ton, it is a safe
bet that you are going to need a lot of tons of the stuff to make any kind of
serious money. It just so happens that we had a lot of tons at the Bonanza mine
near McCarthy, above the Kennicott Glacier. Copper was discovered in the area in
1885, and the Bonanza mine was finally claimed and surveyed in 1900.

There was
virtually unlimited copper available at the Bonanza mine, but the real trick was
to figure out how to get it to market. The mine was about 100 miles from the
coast across the huge Chugach mountain range with its tall peaks and valleys
completely filled in with ice. The area is infested with mosquitoes in the short
summer and freezing cold in the winter. Of course there were no roads at that
time, and few possible passages through the mountains.

Chitna, Alaska

The obvious
solution at the time was to build a railroad, as the automobile was still in
it's infancy and incapable of hauling the substantial amounts of material
necessary. Railroads had been considered since 1898 though their goal was to go
from the coast to the gold fields several hundred miles north on the Yukon
River. River boats would then be able to carry miners up and down the river to
the various gold fields.

Surveys
found that there were three promising points along the coast from which to build
rail lines: Valdez in the West, Cordova in the middle, and Katalla a bit further
East. All three locations had both positive and negative attributes, and
therefore different companies started building rail lines from each of the three
places. Katalla seemed to be the most promising, since it was located on a huge
high grade coal field, and coal was needed for running locomotives and for
smelting copper from the ore. There was even oil in Katalla. The downside was
that Katalla was very exposed to the storms of the Gulf of Alaska and suffered
from persistent winds and high seas. Cordova had a reasonably well protected
port and was only 75 miles from the Katalla coal fields. Valdez had the best
deep water port because both Cordova and Katalla were located near the mouths of
rivers which dump a lot of silt, but building from Valdez meant going through
the very narrow and dangerous Keystone Canyon and no access to the Katalla coal
field.

Things got
started in summer 1906. That summer there were three railroad construction
projects underway in Alaska; the Copper River Railroad Co. began a line from the
newly created townsite of Cordova to head up the Copper River, and the Alaska
Syndicate, run by the Guggenheim Brothers and J. Pierpont Morgan, was building
up from Valdez through Keystone Canyon. Unrelated to the copper mines was a
railroad being built by the Alaska Central Railroad from Seward to the Susitna
Valley. The obvious result of all this construction was a severe labor shortage,
during which the railroads made a sport of attracting workers from the competing
lines.

Things got
shaken up a bit in late 1906 when the Alaska Syndicate bought the rights to
Abercrombie Canyon from the Copper River Railroad company. This canyon was the
key to building a railway up the Copper River as it is a narrow area with only
room for one set of rails to fit through. Shortly thereafter, the Alaska
Syndicate purchased the remaining assets of the Copper River Railway and renamed
their venture the Copper River and Northwestern (CR & NW) Railroad. After this
purchase, the construction was stopped on the line from Valdez, which was only
built to a few miles out of town, approaching Keystone Canyon. For the moment,
work would be concentrated in Cordova, though they quickly abandoned that idea
and concentrated on building from coal rich Katalla.

By 1907
there were 5,000 to 10,000 people jamming Katalla looking for work, and the
place was a real boom town. The Alaska Syndicate was working on two lines from
Katalla at once: the main line up the Copper River going to Kennicott and a
short spur to the nearby heart of the coal and oil fields.

Kuskulana Bridge

With the
Alaska Syndicate seemingly having abandoned the idea of building a railroad from
Valdez, the newly formed Alaska Home Railway, run by Henry Reynolds, decided to
try building from that town. The stumbling block for the Alaska Home Railroad
was that the Alaska Syndicate still held the right of way to Keystone Canyon and
there is no other way out from Valdez. The Alaska Home Railway tried to purchase
the rights to Keystone Canyon, but the Syndicate would not sell, as building
from Valdez was their backup plan if Katalla did not work out. Alaska Home
Railway tried to take the canyon by force, and the Alaska Syndicate guards that
were keeping an eye on the canyon opened fire on the group, killing one person.

The Alaska
Syndicate still would not let go of Keystone Canyon, and it actually did not
really matter any more since Henry Reynolds had run out of money and could not
pay the Alaska Home Railway workers any more. The workers ended up having to go
to Katalla to work for their former competition, the Alaska Syndicate.

Things
weren't going much better in Katalla that summer of 1907, where persistent gales
and stormy weather made it dangerous or impossible for supply ships to land.
Success in Katalla depended upon construction of a 2000 foot breakwater to
protect their harbor. Workers labored on the breakwater all summer, but a big
storm came up in November of that year and destroyed all of their work along
with the town dock and part of a railroad trestle which was under construction.
After that, it was decided that the Alaska Syndicate would cease work in Katalla
for the winter and return in spring of 1908. The winter would be spent on
building the line from Cordova, up the Copper River to Abercrombie Canyon,
through the narrow gap between the Childs and Miles Glaciers, then East to
Kennicott.

Million Dollar Bridge, Cordova

The Alaska
Syndicate never did return to Katalla. Thousands of people lived there waiting
for the Spring construction season, but it never came. Hope was kept alive
though, as there were still definite plans to build a spur off the Copper River
and Northwestern to the coal fields in Katalla, but that never happened either.
There were other attempts to build railroads from Katalla or really get a
significant coal mining operation going, but none ever lasted very long. The
population of Katalla, which had been as high as 10,000, steadily dwindled
throughout the 1910's as hope was given up.

Meanwhile in
Cordova, railroad engineer Michael J. Heney was brought out of retirement in
late 1907 by the Guggenheims to build the Copper River and Northwestern railroad
from Cordova. There were 450 people working on the railroad in winter of 1907 -
08, a number which grew to 3,000 during the summer of 1908. The goal was to
reach the crossing of the Copper River near the Miles Glacier at mile 51 by that
October. At this point, it became fairly obvious that the main railroad line
would be built from Cordova to the copper mines at Kennicott and on from there
to the Yukon river. Cordova had won out based on having a well protected deep
water harbor along with the possibility of tapping into Katalla's coal and oil.
However, the entire enterprise depended upon the construction of a bridge across
the Copper River between the Miles and Childs glaciers.

Due to the
conditions in the area, the Miles Glacier bridge would have to be the strongest
bridge ever built. It would be pounded year round by building sized icebergs
along with huge waves created by ice collapsing off the front of the glacier.
Then there is the persistent rapids of the Copper River, the extreme winds that
can plague the area, and the weight of the ice that will build up on the bridge
each winter. And there was always the danger that the Miles Glacier, located a
mile away, would surge forward and wipe the bridge off the face of the earth
without even hesitating. The Miles Glacier alone is larger than all of the
glaciers in Switzerland combined, so no structure of any kind can withstand it's
advance. Many engineers thought it would be impossible to build a lasting bridge
here, but bridge engineer A. C. O'Neel would prove them wrong…..END OF PART
I……Mike Nourse.